1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telecommunications, and more particularly, to a telecommunications switching network.
2. Background
The telecommunications industry has developed telecommunications switching systems including channel banks with cross-connections to establish communication links. A plurality of channel banks are typically provided on a standard equipment rack to serve as a node in a telecommunications switching network. A plurality of such nodes may be formed with point-to-point, ring or branch interconnections, or a combination thereof, to form a telecommunications switching network. However, conventional channel banks within each node are connected through interfaces with limited bandwidths. Furthermore, the scalability of conventional channel banks in a telecommunications node is limited.
Therefore, there is a need for a scalable and modular digital loop carrier system with integrated transport, switching and control functions which can be flexibly expanded to increase its transport capacity. Furthermore, there is a need for interfaces between the channel banks with increased bandwidths which allow simultaneous transfer of different native mode traffic types, including time division multiplex (TDM) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) traffic.